widescreen gaming

shaggydoug · Post by **shaggydoug** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 7:17 pm

With a decent price in widescreen LCDs available, I was wondering what the consensus is on widescreen PC gaming nowadays? Is it worth spending the extra $40 on the widescreen LCD over the normal LCD even though you lose real estate?

- shaggy

P.S. Yes, I'm trying to get an answer to this question today. Credit Card is in hand and ready to go.

geezer · Post by **geezer** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 8:07 pm

shaggydoug wrote:With a decent price in widescreen LCDs available, I was wondering what the consensus is on widescreen PC gaming nowadays? Is it worth spending the extra $40 on the widescreen LCD over the normal LCD even though you lose real estate?

- shaggy

P.S. Yes, I'm trying to get an answer to this question today. Credit Card is in hand and ready to go.

I have a widescreen monitor (hp f2304) and just for PC games couldn't really recommend it, mainly because so few games support the widescreen aspect ratio (i.e. they'll stretch a 4:3 image, but that just kind alooks bad IMHO). For my dollar, a much cooler investment for PC gaming would be a projector for some serious big screen action.

OTOH, I *love* the widescreen for playing Xbox games.

Turtle · Post by **Turtle** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 9:37 pm

A widescreen TV for the Xbox is a good way to go, many more Xb games support it than PC games. That said, some of the newer PC games are starting to support widescreen.

I think Half-Life 2 was one of them, although I may have confused it for some other game. The information was in an interview, so those are always taken with a grain of salt.

It's just not worth it for games, but if you do other things a lot, like watch movies or produce media, or any sort of app that uses a lot of screen space, it's a decent buy. As an artist, apps like photoshop, which needs a lot of screen space, the tools take up less space overall. However, if you're buying for this reason, it's often better to buy a cheap monitor to use as a second monitor entirely.

Lee · Post by **Lee** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 2:19 pm

Widescreen games are becoming more common. The Sims 2 supports it, as well as Kohan2 I believe. (I don't game on my widescreen laptop much so I can't remember exactly what newer games I got that do support it). I just got the Mac version of War! Age of Imperialism and that supports it too.

Rip · Post by **Rip** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 2:53 pm

Lee wrote:Widescreen games are becoming more common. The Sims 2 supports it, as well as Kohan I believe. (I don't game on my widescreen laptop much so I can't remember exactly what newere games I got that do support it). I just got the Mac version of War! Age of Imperailism and that supports it too.

Hey, I didn't notice Sims2 supported widescreen. Now I have to install it on my laptop, just to see. Thanks! I love it when I get an excuse for installing a game on my laptop. Now it's technical research 8)

Asharak · Post by **Asharak** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 11:30 pm

Rip wrote:Hey, I didn't notice Sims2 supported widescreen. Now I have to install it on my laptop, just to see. Thanks! I love it when I get an excuse for installing a game on my laptop. Now it's technical research 8)

See, we consider you a Lesser Gamer.

You bother with excuses.

- Ash

ohbalto · Post by **ohbalto** » Mon Nov 15, 2004 3:52 pm

Freedom Force worked nicely (interestingly) across my dual 19" monitor setup. A little stretchy, but it *did* fill the space up.

geezer · Post by **geezer** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 11:38 am

Playing HalfLife 2 now at 1920x1200 (16:9) supported natively (by HL2 I mean). It's fantastic

Dirt · Post by **Dirt** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 1:15 pm

I'll never understand this, half the time, the picture looks distorted.

geezer · Post by **geezer** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 4:35 pm

Dirt wrote:I'll never understand this, half the time, the picture looks distorted.

How do you mean? Pix?

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 6:10 pm

Check out the article at tomshardware.com... DIY LCD projector for... $300 or less.

Dirt · Post by **Dirt** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 6:43 pm

geezer wrote:
Dirt wrote:I'll never understand this, half the time, the picture looks distorted.
How do you mean? Pix?

Stretched out.

Meghan · Post by **Meghan** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 7:16 pm

Dell's "gaming laptop", the Inspiron XPS has a wide aspect screen. I was really surprised when I saw that. I'm toying with buying their 600m just because it's got a normal screen.

Buatha · Post by **Buatha** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 7:50 pm

I'd play forever on my plasma if it wasn't for burn-in worries. It's awesome to play on a 42 inch screen, but I ususally have to pause it so often to prevent the burn-in of health/armor/ammo/reticule indicators that never change.

Lee · Post by **Lee** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 9:42 pm

Meghan wrote:Dell's "gaming laptop", the Inspiron XPS has a wide aspect screen. I was really surprised when I saw that. I'm toying with buying their 600m just because it's got a normal screen.

Why? The widescreen is GREAT for everyday use. I hate using normal sized monitors anymore, I can have multiple windows open without having to minimize things to see everything.

More and more games are supporting widescreen, and those that don't will usually run with black lines on the side (KoToR wouldn't for me though for some reason) or you don't notice the stretched image (Warcraft3 and Spellforce). I think widescreen is the way of the future, Macs are already there and a lot of PC laptops are going that way, software supporting it will only become more common.

geezer · Post by **geezer** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 12:10 am

Dirt wrote:
geezer wrote:
Dirt wrote:I'll never understand this, half the time, the picture looks distorted.
How do you mean? Pix?
Stretched out.

huh. I haven't noticed that at all.

The Meal · Post by **The Meal** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 10:08 am

Count me among the I heart widescreen gaming crowd. I've not yet run into a game where I can't play it either on a non-distorted resolution (having either a native 16:9 or 4:3 option available with side bars) or where stretching affects my gameplay. On the other hand, having the widescreen options is tremendously useful for having multiple applications open, and I would assume great for DVD playback (but I don't use my notebook for that).

~Neal

Meghan · Post by **Meghan** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 5:32 pm

hmmm. So games will run in a sort of sideways letterbox? That wouldn't be so bad. I wouldn't want to have graphics stretched oddly but I'm sure a letterbox - type arrangement wouldn't bother me. I've been worried about how it would work on older games and shareware titles like Geneforge. Of course there are so many games coming out this fall that I might never go back to the older games.

I agree that for non-gaming puposes it would be good but realistically there's no point in me buying a laptop that won't do well with games. So if my games - Diablo and Morrowind especially - would do well then I might just get that Sager.

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